The Realistic Observer

Monday, March 28, 2016

Beware: All Eyes On ISIS While Ergodan Seeks de facto Sultanate

One way or another Ergodan will succeed and will be as formidable as, if not more so, than Iran.

Explosions rip through a group of protesters staging an
anti-government peace rally in Ankara, October 2015, resulting in the
worst ever single terror attack in Turkey's modern history. The upsurge
in violence helped propel President Erdoğan's Justice and Development
Party (AKP) to a stronger showing in the November elections, but he did
not receive enough votes to change the constitution.by Burak Bekdil

Secular and liberal Turks sighed with premature relief when on June
7, 2015, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party
(Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in
general elections for the first time since it came to power in November
2002. With 41 percent of the national vote (compared with 49.8 percent
in the 2011 general elections), the AKP won eighteen fewer seats than
necessary to form a single-party government in Turkey's 550-member
parliament. More importantly, its parliamentary seats fell widely short
of the minimum number needed to rewrite the constitution in the way
Erdoğan wanted it so as to introduce an executive presidential system
that would give him uncontrolled powers with few checks and balances, if
any.[1]

Undaunted by what looked like an election defeat, Erdoğan chose to
toss the dice again. At his instructions, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu
pretended to hold coalition negotiations with opposition parties while
secretly laying the groundwork for snap elections.[2]
In Erdoğan's thinking, the loss of a few more seats would make no
difference to AKP power, but re-winning a parliamentary majority would
make the situation totally different. Then a terrible wave of violence
gripped Turkey.

First, the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (Partiya Karkerên
Kurdistan, PKK), which had been fighting a guerrilla war from mountain
hideouts in northern Iraq, declared an end to its unilateral ceasefire
begun in 2013.[3] Then on July 20, a Turkish suicide bomber killed more than thirty people at a pro-Kurdish gathering in the small town of Suruc.[4] Claiming that the Turkish state had a secret role in the bombing, the PKK killed two policemen in the town of Ceylanpinar.[5]
The three-decades-old violence between the Turkish and Kurdish
communities had suddenly roared back with a vengeance. In one of
Turkey's bloodiest summers ever, more than a thousand PKK fighters and
Turkish security officials were killed.

Then in October, ISIS attacked in the Turkish capital. Two suicide
bombers, one Turkish the other Syrian, killed some one hundred people at
a pro-peace rally in the heart of Ankara, the worst single terror
attack in the country's modern history.[6]
By then, Erdoğan had already dissolved parliament and called for early
elections on November 1, calculating that the wave of instability would
push frightened voters toward single-party rule.

Erdoğan's gamble paid off. The elections gave the AKP a comfortable
victory and a mandate to rule until 2019: 49.5 percent of the national
vote, or 317 parliamentary seats, sufficient to form a single-party
government but still short of the magical number of 330 necessary to
bring a constitutional amendment up for referendum. Once again,
political Islam had won in Turkey. But how, in a span of just five
months, did a government mired in rising unemployment, economic
slowdown, terror attacks, and soldiers' funerals succeed in increasing
its national vote by about nine percentage points? A combination of
factors offers some clues.

A Splintered Opposition

The AKP's renewed victory illustrates the hopelessly divided and
polarized state of the Turkish political scene. To begin with, not all
Kurds are PKK supporters. The summer-long violence between the PKK and
the Turkish military seems to have won over those Kurds with relatively
more loyalist sentiments toward Turkey as well as those who sympathize
with the Islamist AKP for reasons of piety. This caused a shift of
votes, measured at 1.4 percentage points, from the pro-Kurdish Peoples'
Democratic Party (HDP) to the AKP.

The AKP's renewed victory illustrates the hopelessly divided and polarized state of the Turkish political scene.

More importantly, the violence improved the AKP's position vis-à-vis
the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which shares more or less the same
voter base. In the June elections, some of the AKP's votes seem to have
shifted to the MHP (which won 16.3 percent of the balloting overall),
apparently due to nationalist disapproval of the AKP's peace overtures
to the Kurds. Once they scrapped the peace process and launched an
all-out war against the restive Kurdish minority, Erdoğan and Davutoğlu
could boast of their newfound nationalist spirit. In the November
elections, the MHP lost 4.1 percent—all of which apparently went to the
AKP.

Add to this the disappearance from the political scene of two
splinter parties, one with an Islamist and the other with nationalist
manifestos, which had won 2 percent of the vote on June 7, allowing the
AKP to pick up another 1.5 percent of the overall vote.

The
opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) shares more or less the
same voter base with the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and gained
strength in the June 2015 general elections. MHP leader Devlet Bahceli
(left) sat down for inconclusive talks with prime minister Ahmet
Davutoğlu (right) in August 2015, but as Turkey spiraled into violence,
and Davutoglu's AKP party scrapped its peace process with the Kurds, the
MHP lost ground in the November balloting.

Finally, in the June elections, some AKP voters apparently refrained
from voting in the face of Erdoğan's lavish public lifestyle, his
assertive unconstitutional intervention in party politics, and growing
allegations of corruption and nepotism. Ipsos, the global market
research company, found that nearly half of those who had abstained were
AKP voters.[7]
Yet they returned to the ballot box in November to help their ailing
party, earning the AKP another 2 percentage points. Was this
"non-buyer's remorse" or something more troubling? Are Turks displaying a
form of Stockholm syndrome in which hostages, psychologically beaten
into submission, develop sympathy and positive feelings toward their
oppressors?

Interestingly, a study released shortly before the November elections
found that only a quarter of Turks were not afraid of Erdoğan; as many
as 68.5 percent said they were. The research also found that even some
of Erdoğan's own supporters were afraid of him.[8] In any event, the turnout rate was nearly 4 percent higher in November than in June—half of which apparently went to the AKP.

Erdoğan's Road to an Elected Sultanate

Erdoğan has never hidden his ambitions to legitimize his de facto executive presidency. As he said in a 2015 speech,

There is a president with
de facto power in the country, not a symbolic one. The president should
conduct his duties for the nation directly but within his authority.
Whether one accepts it or not, Turkey's administrative system has
changed. Now, what should be done is to update this de facto situation
in the legal framework of the constitution.[9]

To legitimize his rule by changing the constitution, his AKP party
needs at least 330 seats but has only 317. Since the November elections,
all three of the major opposition parties have said that they would not
support any AKP-sponsored amendment in favor of an executive
presidential system. But in Turkish politics nothing is impossible.The secular, main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) is
unlikely to be in favor of Erdoğan's sultanate-like presidential system
under any scenario.[10]
The Nationalist Movement Party has firmly denied any potential support
although it has cooperated with the AKP in some controversial
legislative work in the past, such as a bill that legalized the Islamic
headscarf on university campuses.[11] That leaves the pro-Kurdish HDP as Erdoğan's only possible partner.

The Kurdish party's rhetoric on the presidential system has been
tricky. It refused to support any presidential amendment "in a unitary
Turkey" but does that mean it would withhold support from an
AKP-sponsored presidential bill in a "federal Turkey?"[12]
A federal Turkey, meaning one with an autonomous Kurdish region, is the
HDP's main objective. Thus it could find itself in a transactional
relationship with the AKP for some degree of Kurdish autonomy in return
for supporting Erdoğan's modern-day, elected sultanate.

Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan is tirelessly seeking to rewrite the Turkish
constitution to increase his control of the country in its entirety.
While a study released shortly before the November elections found that
more than 68 percent of Turks were afraid of him, his party still won a
comfortable election victory and gained enough seats in parliament to
form a single-party government although still short of the number needed
to bring a constitutional amendment up for referendum.

For that to happen, the current wave of violence between Kurds and
the Turkish military would have to come to a halt. At the beginning of
2016, there were no such signs, and what looked like a localized civil
war, contained mainly to Kurdish-majority southeast Turkey, continued to
claim lives daily.[13]
Worse, Erdoğan and the Davutoğlu government look less prone to any
reconciliation. Even a call for peace could be deemed "terrorist
propaganda."

In January, for example, prosecutors opened a criminal investigation
into the host and the producer of a popular talk show on such charges.
The move came after a caller, identifying herself as a schoolteacher,
protested the civilian casualties during the security operations against
the PKK. The caller was urging the public to raise its voice against
the deaths of "unborn children, babies, and mothers." She did not
even mention the PKK.[14]
Shortly after that, Turkish police detained scores of academics for
signing a declaration denouncing military operations against the PKK. In
their declaration, the so-called traitors wrote that they refused to be
"a party to the crime" and called on the government to halt what they
said was a "massacre."[15]

More than 1,100 Turkish and three hundred foreign academics signed
the declaration, which Turkish prosecutors claimed "insulted the state"
and engaged in "terrorist propaganda" on behalf of the Kurdish group.
Erdoğan decried the signatories and called on the judiciary to act
against this "treachery." Erdoğan said,

Just because they have
titles such as professor [or] doctor in front of their names does not
make them enlightened. These are dark people. They are villains and vile
because those who side with the villains are villains themselves.[16]

Alongside any fresh ceasefire—not likely but not altogether
impossible—HDP will want renewed talks for a political solution to
Turkey's Kurdish dilemma. Beginning in 2011, Erdoğan did enter into
negotiations with the Kurds and convinced them to call for a ceasefire
in 2013. He might try that again.

Davutoğlu often publicly presents a milder Islamist posture than Erdoğan.

But both Erdoğan and the Kurds would have less appetite this time for
such a new political adventure. Kurds trust him less than they did
between 2011 and 2013. At the same time, Erdoğan has discovered that he
wins more votes if he plays to the nationalist Turkish constituencies
rather than Kurdish ones. He will be more reluctant to shake hands with
the Kurds than he was in 2013 and is able to read the election results
of June and November 2015.

Erdoğan's ambitions also leave in limbo his right-hand man, Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. In Turkey, the prime minister is the head of
the executive while the president's constitutionally-defined role is
largely symbolic. When Davutoğlu was campaigning to win more votes for
the AKP in 2015, he was in a real sense campaigning to end his own
political career as the chief executive of the country. There is some
speculation that Davutoğlu, who often publicly presents a milder
Islamist posture than the president, may eventually break with his
patron and his authoritarian style, especially in light of the charges
of corruption, favoritism and extravagance that beset the president.
However, that expectation is too optimistic given Davutoğlu's character
and devotion to ideology.

Since Davutoğlu was chosen by Erdoğan to succeed him as prime
minister in the summer of 2014, he has alternated between conducting
himself ethically and in a Machiavellian fashion. While he may even view
himself as a paladin for advancing the interests of Turkey and Islam
(or Islamism), he knows that in order to further these goals he must
continue to serve the man whom he sees as the champion of Turkish
Islamism, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He must, therefore, remain prime
minister and, as such, must ignore the issues that challenge his ethical
and religious side.

This helps explain why Davutoğlu repeatedly uses one particular word in public speeches: "dawa" (dava in Turkish) or the "political cause."[17]
His loyalty is not to the seat he occupies or to worldly ambitions but
to the struggle for the advancement of Islamism under the Turkish
banner, to the dawa. It is unlikely then to expect Davutoğlu to betray
his boss or the dawa.

Turkey by the Numbers

In Turkish politics, Erdoğan remains unrivalled. There is no credible
indication that any of the three opposition parties could increase
their votes so as to threaten the AKP in the near future, and there is
no internal rival for leadership. The main opposition Republican
People's Party's returns seem to be stuck in neutral, at a mere 25.4
percent in the November 2015 balloting, down marginally from 25.9 in
2011.[18]
The nationalist MHP is in the midst of a chaotic leadership race while
its national figures edge toward a number below the 10 percent threshold
necessary for parliamentary representation (11.7 percent in the
November 2015 election). Although it won parliamentary representation
for the first time in history in 2015, the pro-Kurdish HDP conducts
itself under the violent shadow of the militant PKK.

The
separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) recently declared an end to
its unilateral ceasefire begun in 2013. Although the Turks have a clear
military advantage, the Kurdish minority also possesses a secret weapon:
The fertility rate in Kurdish-speaking parts of Turkey is higher than
in the Turkish-majority regions. The Kurds may emerge as the Turkish
Islamists' main rivals in the not-too-distant future simply by having
more babies.

There are, moreover, sociopolitical and demographic reasons to
anticipate that both Islamists and Kurds will perform better in any
future Turkish election. From a political perspective, Turkey is
becoming increasingly right-wing and religiously conservative. F.
Michael Wuthrich of the University of Kansas' Center for Global and
International Studies has demonstrated that Turkish voting bloc patterns
have progressively shifted to the right from 59.8 percent in 1950 to
66.7 percent in 2011.[19]
This pattern, presumably still in progress, will work in favor of the
AKP or any other political party championing Islamist-nationalist ideas.
In 2015, Erdoğan boasted that the number of students studying to be
imams rose from a mere 60,000 when his party first came to power in 2002
to 1.2 million in 2015.[20]
When those students reach the voting age of eighteen, marry, and have
children, their pious families will likely form a new army of five to
six million AKP voters.

But the Kurds also have their own demographic advantages. Presently,
the total fertility rate in eastern and southeastern, Kurdish-speaking
Turkey is 3.41, compared to an average of 2.09 in the non-eastern,
Turkish-speaking areas. For his part, Erdoğan has urged every Turkish
family to have "at least three, if possible more" children.[21]
But things are not moving as he wishes. The total fertility rate in
Turkey dropped from 4.33 in 1978 to 2.26 in 2013. Unsurprisingly, it
currently stands at 3.76 for women with no education and at 1.66 for
women with high school or higher degrees.[22]

Just like less-educated (and more devout) Turks grew in number and
percentages over the past decades and brought Erdoğan to power simply by
combining demographics and the ballot box, the Kurds may, therefore,
emerge as the Turkish Islamists' main rivals in the not-too-distant
future simply by using the same political weapon.

Conclusions

Turkey seems to be stuck between two unpleasant options: Erdoğan's
increasingly authoritarian, de facto one-man rule or the same rule
legitimized by a rewritten constitution. The sultan will not give up his
ambition to raise "pious generations."[23] But do Turks care how their country is trending?

Nearly half of AKP voters do not think they live in a democratic country but are happy to vote for the party anyway.

A recent survey by Kadir Has University in Istanbul suggests that a
substantial number of Turks are fully aware of the current trajectory.
The survey found that 56.5 percent of Turks do not think Turkey is a
democratic country while 36.1 percent think it is. Similarly, 59 percent
think that there is no freedom of thought while 33.1 percent said there
is. A mere 9 percent of Turks think there "definitely" is a free press
in the country although another 31.3 percent agree to some extent. These
numbers leave almost 60 percent who are sure they no longer have these
civil liberties.[24]

More alarmingly, when narrowed down to AKP voters—49.5 percent
according to the November 2015 elections—the study finds that these
Turks do not care all that much about democratic values. Only 58.3
percent of those who vote for the AKP think Turkey is a democratic
country; 56.7 percent think there is freedom of thought in the country,
and 54.8 percent think there is a free press. In other words, nearly
half of AKP voters do not think they live in a democratic country but
are happy to vote for the party anyway, without blaming it for the
democratic deficit. This is truly worrying for Turkey and, looking
beyond Anatolia, for NATO (of which Turkey is a member), and the EU (to
which Turkey aspires).

The country is being dragged into increasing levels of
authoritarianism with few if any checks and balances. The opposition
parties fail to impress the voters and show no sign of credibly
challenging Islamist rule. An unresolved rift between a growing Kurdish
population and a shrinking Turkish one has the potential to explode,
especially as Kurds outside Turkey gain de facto independence.
Meanwhile, a frightening number of Turks just do not seem to care that
the representative, democratic republic bequeathed to them by Kemal
Atatürk is becoming just one more relic in the junkyard of history.

Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist for Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow of the Middle East Forum. He has also written for the U.S. weekly Defense News since 1997.